In November 2023, we reported on dubious claims made by marketing firm Cox Media Group (CMG) Local Solutions. The company advertised a service called Active Listening on a website that said, “It’s true. Your devices are listening to you” and claimed it could use “voice data” to help advertisers target ads to specific people.

Naturally, panic ensued. 404 Media, which initially spotted the website, for instance, wrote that the idea of smartphones listening to people to sell products “may finally be a reality."

A screenshot taken in 2023 from a webpage that CMG has since removed.

Credit: Ars Technica via CMG Local Solutions

The idea of a marketing firm using AI to “detect relevant conversations via smartphones, smart TVs, and other devices” in real time—according to a since-deleted CMG blog post from November 2023 (still viewable via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine)—has raised alarms.

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